AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY: MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO LEARN EFL WRITING BY USING PEER RESPONSE

English Language

The current state of English teaching and learning highlights the need to diversify teaching methods and improve the overall learning conditions to raise the standard of foreign language education, especially in English proficiency. The implementation of the communicative language teaching (CLT) method emphasizes the importance of student motivation and active engagement in learning a foreign language. Therefore, it is suggested that neglected activities in writing instruction should be considered to make lessons more motivating. Undoubtedly, writing provides students with valuable opportunities to express themselves accurately and communicatively. However, Vietnamese students' writing proficiency remains low, primarily due to limited emphasis on writing practice in English assessments, which predominantly focus on grammar and reading comprehension rather than writing skills. To motivate learners and enhance their writing abilities, this study aims to investigate the peer response method in teaching EFL writing. The study involves 66 first-year students of English Language major from the School of Languages, Thai Nguyen University, divided into control and experiment groups. Over a 15-week period during the second semester of the 2022-2023 school year, an experiment utilizing the peer response approach is designed and conducted. The outcomes of the study demonstrate that the new method significantly improves students' writing skills and has positive effects on their attitudes and motivation. Additionally, the collected data will provide valuable information to teachers regarding the implementation of the peer response approach in teaching writing. Overall, by diversifying teaching methods, emphasizing writing practice, and incorporating the peer response approach, it is expected that students' writing motivation will be enhanced, leading to improved English proficiency.

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